A few days later Elizabeth was leaving a meeting with the surgical staff and returning to her office when she heard someone calling her name. She turned to see Tess. "Hello stranger!" she exclaimed. "Good to see you!" Tess returned Elizabeth's greeting with a smile and then a slight blush as she looked down at the large, brightly wrapped box she was carrying.
"I've been trying to get Uncle Rob to invite you over ever since we've been back, but I guess he's still recovering from the trip," Tess half apologized. Elizabeth shook her head and mustered a little laugh. "He did mention something about slides. Sounded more like a threat, so I never followed up."
"Well, anyway, we got this present for Ella, and I just wanted her to have it," Tess mumbled in growing embarrassment.
"That's so sweet of you both. Really!" Elizabeth reassured gently taking the box. "I'm sure she'll love it."
"I should go. I'm supposed to meet Uncle Rob for lunch ..." Tess said she was going but she didn't move. Elizabeth realized that she wanted to ask Elizabeth to join them, but just then she felt her pager buzz and took a peek at it. "E.R.," she explained to Tess. "I don't know it your uncle will be free for lunch after all." Elizabeth quickly stowed the box in her office and ran down to the ER.
Several hours later, when she had finished a rather complicated series of skin grafts on a child, Elizabeth decided to head back to the ER to see how other family member were recovering from the fire. She heard Robert's voice before she saw him, speaking softly, his words barely audible above the sobs of a middle-aged Latino man. His wife and two other children had succombed to smoke inhalation, Robert was explaining, but the youngest child was fighting for his life upstairs. "The very best surgeon I know is helping him," Robert assured the man. "You have to help him, too. You have to be strong for him," Robert was encouraging. The man was shaking his head, refusing to leave the bodies of his daughters. Robert looked at the floor uncertain and Elizabeth was about to step in when she saw him gently begin to push another gurney over from the adjoining curtain. The man gasped at the sight of his wife, her body covered with a yellow sheet stained deeply with blood from her open chest. "Let her watch over these two. You go upstairs and be with your son. She would want you to be with him. He's the youngest, isn't he?" Robert asked. The man nodded. "He needs you," Robert took the man gently by the arm and guided him towards the door. When the emerged from the curtain area, Elizabeth met them. "Mr. Fuentes?" she asked. He nodded again and Robert's eyes met hers, silently consigning this man to her care, trusting her to take over. As Elizabeth led him to the elevator, the man looked back at Robert, who nodded encouragement. The man turned toward Elizabeth and the open doors and they both disappeared into the elevator.
The next morning, Elizabeth rolled to slap her alarm and grabbed for the phone. She wanted to check her last patient, Miguel Fuentes and to have someone tell his father she'd be in soon. Once that was done, she tried to shake the feeling of guilt she had had upon leaving the man last night in recovery, a man who had lost most of his family and whose last remaining child would soon be waking to unbelievable pain. She knew that this part of recovery was the worst for patients but also for parents, but she couldn't be there for each one all the time. She had her own family, her own feelings to think about.
Just then she heard Ella chirping from her room, probably playing with the new pumpkin shaped pillows Elizabeth had gotten her for Halloween. Elizabeth went to see, but found her instead sitting on the floor of the hallway, pulling at the ribbons on the box that held Robert's gift. Elizabeth had set it outside of Ella's bedroom door last night, thinking it was safe there. She made a mental note that she'd have to be cannier with the Christmas presents now that Ella was walking.
"Alright," she declared, scooping up Ella in one arm and the box in the other. "Breakfast first." And they ambled downstairs for cereal and juice.
When Ella was finished with her cheerios, Elizabeth wiped her sticky fingers and took her into the living room to open the present. Inside the box and covered in tissue paper was a hand-carved wooden Pinocchio marionette. Elizabeth wasn't sure how to use the strings, but she tried to make the toy do a little dance for Ella which made the child laugh and clap. Under the toy was the book that told Pinocchio's story, not the Disney version but a vintage Italian children's book with beautiful, hand-colored illustrations. She showed Ella a few of the pictures and promised to read her the story that night (although since she didn't know Italian, she'd have to follow the pictures and make up the plot as she went). Just then, the babysitter arrived and Elizabeth let her take over Ella's morning activities while she cleared up the ribbons and wrapping paper and carried the gifts back upstairs.
As she did, she heard something knocking around at the bottom of the box, and when she got to her bedroom she felt around to find a small, flat box she hadn't opened. She shook it gently, and then removed the top. There was a yellow post-it note looking slightly out of place on top of carefully folded tissue paper. On it was written the brief message: "I know he bought these for you, so I slipped them into Ella's box. Tess." Under the paper were two delicate ebony combs inlaid with mother-of -pearl. Elizabeth imagined the old-fashioned, upswept hairstyles that demanded these sorts of ornaments, and the elegant ladies who wore them. She felt that if she put them in her own hair, she'd be transported back into a faraway, magical, and more romantic time. And then it came to her, and she felt her heart thump and dropped the box. Robert had bought her this sweet, personal, extremely special gift. He had been an ocean away thinking of her.
As soon as she arrived at the hospital, she went to the burn unit to see the Fuentes family, but to her surprise Robert had beat her to it. He was explaining the careful dosage the pain meds that would be necessary to keep Miguel comfortable without slowing his heart. He had a page ripped from a wall calendar and was noting on it approximate dates for the next procedures as well as some other milestones for recovery like sitting, eating, and eventually walking again. Elizabeth knocked to warn them of her interruption, aware that Robert might not want to be surprised spending extra time with a patient much less a parent who technically was no longer his concern. He looked up and his brow wrinkled with the sort of annoyed embarrassment Elizabeth had already seen in the rare situations where Robert had let his repressed humanity surface. She looked away to let him recover, smiled at Mr Fuentes, and then went to examine Miguel. She heard Robert cough as she did so, perhaps trying to get her attention, but she ignored him. She realized that as an experienced surgeon, Robert had already performed an assessment of the grafts, but as the boy's doctor, Elizabeth had to redo it herself. With her back to him, she heard Robert say goodbye to the father. "Dr Corday will take excellent care of him," she heard him reassure Mr Fuentes before he opened the door to leave.
Late in the afternoon, she gazed into her coffe cup, exhausted. Perhaps emotionally exhausted more than anything else. She had spent the whole day since the Fuentes boy in the ER where she and Robert had dramatically disagreed about several surgical cases. Each time she tried to agree with him, he would provoke her, make her realize that he'd only been baiting her, that she had chosen the right course in the first place and that he was just testing her in a game of chicken to see who could most bravely do the most imaginary damage to the patient before giving in to the best treatment without appearing to give an inch to the other. She felt tears coming to the back of her eyes. Why was he being so difficult? Why couldn't they just work together?
Withough looking up, she noticed after a few minutes that someone had taken a seat beside her at her table in the cafeteria. She looked across the tabe without looking up and saw his hand, fingers nervously drumming against the side of a styrofoam cup.
"I'm sorry, Lizzie," she heard him say in a low, tired voice. Then a swallow. Then nothing. She looked up. He did look sorry. His eyes were dark and serious, his mouth turned down at the corners, contrite. As sorry as she felt for him at times, though, she was angry too, and wanted some sort of explanation. "Then why won't you stop bullying me? I thought we were over that?"
Robert shook his head, smiled ruefully. "You know I pull your pigtails 'cause I like you," he attempted, but Elizabeth wouldn't accept that answer which had worked for his behavior in the past but didn't explain his unrelenting bitterness toward her today. She shook her head in response, "That's not an answer, Robert. Not one I will accept anyway. Nor then is your apology," and she moved to leave.
"Elizabeth," he said, stopping her. "It's because I can tell a patient everything about his surgery, his recovery, his scars, about every procedure, about every risk, about every technique, but I can't do anything for anyone now. I talked to that man for hours, but I could do nothing to help his son."
Elizabeth sighed. At least he was honest. She wanted to tell him how much he had helped Mr Fuentes, but she wasn't sure that Robert would believe her. She knew that Robert had loved the feeling of power his skill as a surgeon had given him, and she knew that his injury had made him feel powerless.
He coughed a little. "I'm not sure I ever realized how really good you are," he said quickly.
"What?" she spluttered, taken aback by this turn of thought.
"You've always been very gifted, of course, but now, I really see what a true gift you have." He paused, "I send you cases that I know I could never have saved, and you save them. And I'm jealous, because I can't even try."
"Robert!" she tried to seize the sleeve of his lab coat as he stood to go. He wasn't looking at her. He was already walking quickly, and then he was gone.
Later that evening at his house the phone rang. Robert usually let Tess answer as the calls were now almost always for her, but she was in the shower, so he let the machine pick up.
"Robert, it's Elizabeth," her voice began. "I'm calling to thank you and Tess for your wonderful gift. Ella loved the story, and I'm working on my skills as a puppeteer. Anyway, Robert, about today. You're wrong."
Robert picked up, "Wrong about what?" he asked, not provokingly but gently.
"When you send me the tough cases, I'm still uncertain. I'm there in the OR as if I know what to do, but I so often don't. So I think about what you would do. And often I don't do that either," she laughed. "But it's as if working with you (or at least imagining I am) helps me to find my own way. I don't know if that makes sense, but..."